I'm sitting here tonight trying to make sense of Ford's belief that the Fiesta Movement campaign is an example of the kind of social media that will translate into a successful Ford.

Here's a picture of what it's all about. A video by Parris Harris and Yoga Army, aka Phashion Army.

Fiesta Movement is getting quite the PR push at Ford right now and it'll only get worse as the December LA show draws near, when the Fiesta is actually launched in the US. What's the product? A car that Ford designed in Europe several years ago and launched there in autumn 2008. It hasn't even gone on sale yet in the US - it'll be a 2011 model year car.

"Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven't been ordinary, however. Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic micropayment adoption, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors.

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away."

The reality is that this is what's happening right now in much of the car industry. And I fear it's happening in Ford, too.

Fiesta Movement is an ad campaign - nothing more. The philosophy that ever more "sophisticated" marketing can solve problems. Web-savvy, video-producing creative people will transform Ford's brand image and reconnect it with a new generation. Meanwhile Ford, despite thinking it's had a terrible year, has had a lucky one. Both of its major US competitors have gone into bankruptcy. General Motors and Chrysler are probably fatally wounded.

Let's talk about real stuff - well electric cars, which aren't real yet, but will be soon. Even in a world short on EVs and high on rhetoric, Ford's current global 'electric' product range is weak - the company has one star car - the fantastic Fusion Hybrid - and a scattering of dated Escape and Mariner SUVs. The next generation? Ford has been hanging on the fence about which suppliers to use for a Focus EV – and unless there's a big surprise, we're still in limbo on that and much else as Ford insists the numbers don't add up. We're so, so far, from the car Ford really should build - an electric F150 truck. Parris and Yoga talk about Ford reconnecting with the American psyche. But Americans, beyond a few areas on East and West coasts, don't want small cars. Most of them don't even want cars. They want trucks.

But the guys who design trucks are seemingly sitting elsewhere right now, watching a football game. So cars is the only place where innovation is happening. As GM and Chrysler fade away, Ford's key competition in that zone is now global. And be in no doubt that the global competition is about to become truly formidable. Renault Nissan has the boldest strategy of all - we were there to see Renault blow everyone away at Frankfurt in September, with bold plans for four production pure-electric cars by 2011, and Nissan is deadly serious about its mainstream, mass-market Leaf, due in 2011, and undoubtedly the first global car that will shake the Prius out the tree it's got right now all to itself.

And that's just the start. Volkswagen is doing intriguing things with very efficient diesel vehicles, BMW's Efficient Dynamics strategy makes Ford's new EcoBoost petrol engines look pretty conservative. And that's before we talk about Honda, Toyota or anyone else.

I can't help but think that Ford will default to present Renault Nissan as the crazy radicals, imagining an unrealistic future. When the reality is Renault Nissan are the pragmatists, because they and others have the pieces in place to push ahead. They've forged partnerships with entire countries to roll out electric cars, while Ford is trialing 15 electric Focuses in Hillingdon in North London, and in patches around the US.

Right now Ford is not a global car company. It is a multinational car company - in fact the granddad of multinationals - with different product, management and marketing teams on different continents. And it thinks it can treat customers in different places in different ways. Imagine if Apple did that, fobbing off its American customers with a social media campaign, to launch a product it introduced in Europe over 12 months earlier. Advertising guys, dressing up social media as big change, would get nowhere. Customers would see through it right away.

"Imagine if Apple did that, fobbing off its American customers with a social media campaign, to launch a product it introduced in Europe over 12 months earlier."

How do you feel about the idea of driving an EV? Fancy trying one out for a bit? Wondering what the range is like in the real world? Have you gone as far as to consider how the Jones's next door will perceive you when they see you've got one of those new-fangled battery cars on the drive?

If so, then now's your chance. As part of the UK Government's push to speed up adoption of low carbon vehicles, it has set up a 300 vehicle-strong trial through the Technology Strategy Board, to gain real world data and understanding on electric vehicles. Several auto makers, cities or boroughs, and power firms are taking part. Clusters of cars in specific geographic locations will form part of the trial over the next couple of years. Mini is already looking for potential users of its 'E' in Oxford and London, while Ford's fleet of 15 battery electric Focus's will be based in the London Borough of Hillingdon. Today the Borough announced it is officially looking for households and individuals who would like to be included in that trial.

So how's the trial going to work, and what's the point? This is the latest in a long line of announcements connected to Ford's electrification strategy, and a couple of weeks back at the Frankfurt auto show, we got the low down from Ford's manager for the UK trial, Tim Nicklin. What appears to have been missed by others, is that this small trial could have huge implications for both Ford and the wider EV landscape in Europe. That's because although we know that an electric version of the next Ford Focus will definitely be offered for sale in the USA, Ford of Europe have apparently not yet decided whether to offer it, and it seems that this trial will go some way to informing a decision as to whether it will or not. As the Focus has frequently been the UK's best selling car over the past ten years, and is normally in the top ten best sellers across all of Europe, the potential impact of such a decision is clearly huge. Over to Tim for more then...

15 vehicles is a very small number, but it's interesting to learn that these cars will in fact be cycled between housholds each quarter. Thus, over the planned two year trial period, the number of people who get exposure to them, looks likely to be somewhat higher than expected.

Clearly it's critical that - from a technical point of view - these cars are exposed to as many different drivers, driving styles, trips, loads and contexts as possible. Doing so should give manufacturers such as Ford a reasonable set of data to work from, and ultimately calculate real world range for these vehicles. That's a critical challenge when we talk about actually selling production versions of EVs to the average man in the street, because as Darryl Siry suggests, if manufacturers launch their vehicles with range claims that prove unrealistic in the real world, then it could have a massive adverse impact on a potential future market for EVs. If the first adopters see figures that are half what they were 'sold', they feel cheated, mislead, and tell their friends, who tell their friends and quickly you've got a situation where people don't trust range claims and potentially shun EVs.

Missing a trick with dated research methods?

Our real concern though, is that there appears to be over-emphasis on the technical side, and not enough talk about user experience research. Surely, a critical element of this trial ought to be open, ethnographic user research. Tim talks about user research from the point of view of clinics when we challenged him on this. As this is something that even old-school types in the auto industry are now starting to shun, that doesn't wash. If you put people in a room with others and ask them a bunch of questions, you'll get skewed results.

Instead, via modern tools such as user video diaries, blogs, photo blogs, tweets, video-based research, and ethnographic studies where researchers practically live with a family while they have the car, there would be a real opportunity to collect useful information about the very intangiable stuff that can't be captured via questionnaire or data logger.

Ultimately if more people are going to buy EVs, we need to understand how they feel, what their motivations are, their perceptions, reflections, likes and dislikes. There's an argument that with families who do get to use one of these Focus's for three months, we should be doing this before, during, and again after their time with the car. It comes down to understanding intangiables. It's hard to do, but ultimately, why people buy a particular car, what they think about it, and what it says about them - is often intangiable.

As a by-product, doing this research work openly, publishing it via the web and building communities around it could be used as a way to raise awareness, improve understanding and even generate greater public demand for EVs. Right now, the penetration of the web, use of social media, and cheap cost/fast speed of consumer video tools coupled with Youtube, means that this research could be published almost as it happens. Ford did it with Fiesta Movement. Why can't it do the same in Hillingdon?

The car industry has long conducted its research in secret, but it really shouldn't here. We aren't talking about why you'd buy a particular type of Ford instead of a particular type of VW. We're talking about an entire new power source, a new driving experience and an entire new eco-system around it. Right now, that entire eco-system is in its infancy and is fragile, and there's a clear danger that if car makers, politicians and the like, try to run before they can walk, then the whole thing may fall flat on its face due to confusion, lack of understanding and a general sense of miss-trust among the car buying public.

Ford, Scottish and Southern, the Technology Strategy Board, Hillingdon and all of the others involved in the similar trials across the UK need to get with the times and bring this stuff to life. A few families filling in questionnaires will be mere dust. It could be much much better.

It'd be stupid to suggest that more efficient, cleaner cars are a bad thing. Surely, getting to a point where cars produce little or zero emissions, and use no oil, would be a good thing - right?

To me, the biggest and most useful role the Prius plays today, is in acting as a technological stepping stone from where we are now, to where we're going to go in the future. It introduces the notion of a car being powered, and driving, differently to what many of us are used to, while still operating in a way we can understand and not looking so odd as to spook people out about our automotive future...

But last night, one unintended consequence of a future with zero-emission cars struck me right between the eyes. Allow me to explain. My own car sits outside the house most of the week, largely because I'm quite dictatorial about it not being used for short, local trips. Pick-ups at the station, shopping in Kingston, popping to the corner shop or supermarket - these aren't jobs for the internal combustion engine, they're jobs for my legs.

Yet at 8 o'clock last night, halfway through a Nigel Slater Japanese noodle recipe, I suddenly realised we didn't have a critical ingredient - the noodles. Normally at this point (besides swearing a lot), I'd have given up and cooked something else, or run half a mile up the road to Waitrose to get some. Yet, with a Prius parked outside, I didn't hesitate to jump in and glide up to said Supermarket, because hey, going in the car certainly was quicker than walking, and this was a hybrid car, so I could do most of the trip in electric mode and hence without guilt or emissions.

The issue this causes - potentially - is that we reach a point sometime in the future, where people stop thinking about the most appropriate mode of transport for a trip, and simply use their car regardless. I may be wrong, but today I think a healthy proportion of people now think about whether their car is the best vehicle to use for a very short local trip. I suspect two primary factors in this are cost and environmental concerns. But if we remove these two factors (which hybrid or electric cars potentially do) the unintended consequences are clear to see - worse traffic, more parking issues, all the usual stuff bandied about by the anti-car brigade. I'm treading a tricky line here. I'm not suggesting the Prius and the green car movement many credit it with creating is a bad thing, or that we should attempt to stop it. Lower carbon, less guilt car travel is largely a good thing. Yet I can't help wondering if we're asking the wrong question when it comes to urban travel. Electric cars are now seen as a panacea. But we should be wary, particularly about the impact on urban environments - of a future where we're using what is still a 1400kg, 10 square metre sized device to move one 80kg human a mile down the road.

Oh, and perhaps because of this type of driving behaviour, our average fuel economy has now fallen to 52mpg. Food for thought.

Toyota have lent us a new Prius for the week. Regular readers may remember that the last time we were in LA, we rented Toyota's ubiquitous hybrid for a few days, and came away somewhat unimpressed. We ended that piece by saying this:

"The final irony? For all its technical wonder, at the end of our trip
the Prius came out with an average of around 45.5mpg. Which is 5 mpg
short of the diesel Fiat Punto I use on the clogged streets of London."

But now there's a new Prius on the block. Toyota have moved the styling away from the dumpy, but highly identifiable shape of the second generation car, to something that is more crisply styled, and for want of a better word, 'dynamic' looking. The new car also agressively attempts to shut up those of us who've never been great hybrid fans, and who've long thought a good turbo diesel would be its fuel economy equal. The headline figure is 89g/km of Co2, and 72.4 mpg.

We'll run a regular blog/update over the week with our views on the car, but for now, first impressions are very favourable. The Prius is incredibly quiet - its new three way EV, Eco and PWR modes meaning you can switch the car's character quite decisively. In EV it will run electrically, up to 30mph for a couple of miles. Which means in stop start London traffic you barely have the motor kick in at all. In PWR, it's actually quite sprightly and responsive. Most impressive is that in 15 miles of chock-a-block London traffic, and without 'trying', we're getting 65.5mpg so far.

Wonder if we can keep that up over a week...

Check back for more soon. Right now, I have to dash and pick up my fiance, who demanded to be picked up in it from work once she heard I was in central London with it. A self proclaimed hybrid-hater, it'll be interesting to see if she's impressed as I am on first acquaintences. Oh and if you've any questions or things you'd like us to test, leave a comment or drop us a line.

We're heading down a road where large numbers of cars will be powered by batteries in the future. Aside from the cost of batteries (dropping fast), the main reason for consumers to hesitate about jumping into an electric vehicle (EV) in the next few years, is range anxiety. We are not suddenly going to develop cars with batteries in them which will cover 500 miles on a charge, so how are we going to cover longer distance journeys?

The auto industry is (sensibly) proposing a solution which meets the average driver's needs about 95% of the time. You'll be able to drop the kids at school, get to work, and then home again via the shops all on one overnight charge, which you'll do either at or outside your home. But for road trips and non-average commuters, a host of new partner firms (and industries) claim to have a solution to the range problem. Best know of these is BetterPlace - who are developing an electric car charging network in several countries, and who will provide roadside swap stations in Israel and Japan within a couple of years, where you drive in and a depleted battery will be swapped - within two minutes - for a fully charged one.

But there's another solution which falls between the standard eight hour overnight charge, and the battery swap solution. It's known as the "fast charge" and it's a term which is being bandied about with increasing frippery. We've seen a section of the emerging EV industry (both start ups and established auto OEMs) change their tune about this. Back in 2007, no one had an answer to the problem of how to juice up the car's battery quickly if you ran out while on the go. Yet just two years later, here's the stock answer:

Southwest England is Britain's first official UK "low carbon development zone". The region has an amazing technology legacy - think Roman Baths, Georgian Cities, Brunel, SS Great Britain, Concorde. It's got great coastline, a strong surf culture, hilly, beautiful cities and green icons like The Eden Project. It's also the part of Britain most closely linked to the idea of the permanent traveller - the South West is Britain's leading hippie region. If it had good, flexible flows of investment capital and more inward and outward migration I'd almost call it Britain's California.

I argued to the audience that while the car industry is working out how to replace combustion engines with electric motors and batteries, it's worth asking whether in twenty or thirty years' time it's what we'll need. Are they simply servicing a declining market, while something else altogether different happens outside the window? Rather than being about electric powertrains, could the real answers be related to something else - how we live and work?

The dangers of designing for a false future

The writer Hamish McRae once told me (in the Hole in the Wall pub in Waterloo) that "the future of how we move is entirely connected to the future of how we work", and his thought has shaped my thinking ever since. Those British and French engineers built Concorde for politicans concerned with national prestige and jobs, and for airlines who where, in the early 1960s (Concorde was launched in November 1962), in the middle of a jet-age boom fuelled by postwar technology and wealth. This had seen tremendous wartime advances in aircraft design and propulsion take us on an incredible performance curve from 1940 through 1960. For context, remember that Concorde was only launched four years after the first transatlantic jet services were launched in 1958 between London and New York. It seemed reasonable back then to believe that speed would dominate as business people would want to be in London for a meeting in the morning and then an evening reception in New York.

Of course, aviation's development curve took on a different path. Instead of getting ever faster flights for an elite, minority "jet set", the 1973 oil shock and the flight of creative engineering talent in the early 70s from mechanical to information technology meant supersonic became a step too far. The reality of work and leisure took over and the world embraced flights for the masses. In the 1960s, airliners replaced ocean liners and airports supplanted seaports (Britain effectively moved its main passenger ports from Southampton and Liverpool to Heathrow) and subsonic airliners went on to redefine flows of migration and underpin and expand globalisation through the '70s, '80s and '90s. Boeing, while getting government funds to develop an SST, cannily developed the 747 as an insurance policy. Pioneers like Juan Trippe (who led Pan Am and is why we have the 747) eventually moved over and people like Freddie Laker and then Herb Kelleher, Richard Branson, Stelios and Michael O'Leary created today's air travel reality. Today we have incredibly low cost flights for the masses supporting migration, everyday business travel and leisure (unfortunately all still powered by 1960s-era engine designs).

Norman Belle Geddes and the 1939 New York Expo

I remind you of the above for context - about how technologies and visions developed in one era often only really create massive change in another one - and how some distract and others define what comes next. Which brings me back to cars, home and work. Today, the majority of people outside the centre of cities live a lifestyle that was first showcased at Futurama, the General Motors' pavilion at the 1939 New York Expo. Americans (and everyone else) were dazzled by designer Norman Belle Geddes's vision that people would live in communities linked to highways, using their own fantastic vehicles to flow smoothly and comfortably from one place to another. We would finally face the death of distance.

Lots of people and businesses loved Futurama. It helped the car industry find a way forward from a Fordist world of slightly dull, standardised mass-made cars, and it influenced the entire world's concept of what urban development should be. The economics of vehicle manufacturing could scale to meet it, property developers loved it, and it suited employers who could access a bigger workforce pool, all addicted (often through debt on car and house finance) to perpetuate the lifestyle. Yet the reality of the cost and blight of the resulting highway infrastructure, congestion, high energy costs, pollution, and the enduring draw of dense, sociable old pre-1940s cities undermined Futurama in fundamental ways.

So in 2009, 70 years on, with General Motors just bankrupt and great tracts of suburban America covered in unwanted repossessed, stripped out McMansions, are we facing the end of Futurama as a blueprint? Has it literally stopped being sustainable?

Hamish McRae's wife is Frances Cairncross. She wrote a book in 1997 called "The Death of Distance". Written 12 years ago, that's as good a place as any to start working out what comes next. It explores how the communications revolution - the internet and mobile phones - will change our understanding of, and response to, distance.

And perhaps the ultimate irony here? Norman Belle Geddes, architect of Futurama, was the father of Barbara Belle Geddes. Some of you will remember that Barbara played Miss Ellie, the epicentre of the Ewing family, in the 1980s TV series Dallas. The one all about the excesses and lure of '80s capitalism, and the power of American oil.